


How I like to imagine it

by moontheloonrocksmysocks (dontthrowsticksatme)



Category: John Entwistle - Fandom, Keith Moon - Fandom, The Who
Genre: 7 september, Death, Gen, Heaven, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 11:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2267859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontthrowsticksatme/pseuds/moontheloonrocksmysocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On september the 7th Keith wakes up somewhere and can't remember what happened. This time it's different than with all his other hangovers though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How I like to imagine it

Keith Moon woke up with a giant head ache. ‘Not again,’ was the first thing he thought. Then he opened his eyes and started laughing, because he wasn’t in England anymore. It seemed like he fell asleep somewhere in the middle of a dessert.

‘How the fuck did I end up here?’ he thought, laughing out loud about his own insane party habits. He turned round, looking for a way to get back home. A highway went through the sandy, flat landscape and right next to him was a pole, like there was going to stop a bus eventually. That fascinated him. Did he get here by bus? Was he kicked off for being too rowdy? That seemed plausible. Could he get back home with the same bus?

Keith decided to stay right there and wait till the next one came along. He just wished he had something to drink. He felt horrible. He felt much more badly then he normally felt after a night out. It scared him a little, but he could still stand and whatever was the matter, he needed to get away from here – and he wasn’t going to walk. He was rich and famous for god’s sake. He deserved a bloody limousine, at the least.  
He leaned against the pole for a few seconds, but got restless. He was bored already. Soon he was so bored he got angry. How much longer did he need to wait here? He kicked the sand around a little and paced up and down along the road and around the bus stop. But what if it wasn’t a bus stop? What if it was just a pole? And what if he needed to take the bus the other way? Keith was too restless to wait any longer for a bus he wasn’t sure was going to come and take him home, in such a boring landscape. He didn’t bring a bit of firework, like his old cherry bombs, and even his cigarettes were gone.

‘ _What the fuck did I do last night_?’ he moaned again. He tried his best to remember, but everything was a blur. He recalled going to bed at home with his girlfriend and even waking up the next morning, but after that everything just went black. 

After what felt to him like hours, yet it wasn’t even two minutes, Keith gave up waiting. He couldn’t stand still for this long when there was nothing to distract him. He started to walk away from the bus stop, in the opposite direction of the road. ‘Eventually I’m gonna have to wind up  _somewhere_ ,’ he thought optimistically.  

The sun blinded him a little and worsened his dreadful head ache. He was tired and thirsty and bored and wished someone was with him, preferably someone who could lend him a smoke. He felt nauseous.

Just as he’d walked a few steps, there was a sound behind him. Looking back, he saw sand blowing up above the horizon. Keith hurried back to the bus stop and waved and jumped excitedly. He couldn’t help himself, he was so relieved to see a bit of life in this dull desert.

As soon as the bus approached, his jaw dropped. The bus wasn’t anything like what he expected. It was multicoloured and full of flowers, peace signs and weird shapes, like the ones he saw at the Woodstock festival. Janis Joplin, George Harrison and John Lennon had cars painted like that too, he remembered. This thing could have used a wash though. It was covered in inches of old dust. You could hardly make out the colours anymore.

Keith wasn’t too sure whether he liked it. ‘What kinda people am I gonna meet inside? Bleedin’ hippies? I’ll be thrown off again in a sec.’ He sighed a little, but what choice did he have? So as the bus stopped before Keith, he promised himself to try and behave. He had to get back home.

He jumped up and down impatiently as the doors opened annoyingly slowly, but when he could finally see inside, the bus was empty except for the driver, a sleepy looking fellow.

‘’Ello, sir,’ Keith greeted kindly, restlessly stroking his hair flat. ‘Where are we going?’

Before he could get inside properly, the bus doors closed behind him, shoving him inside. Immediately the driver drove off at full speed.  

‘’Ey,’ Keith said, a little offended. ‘Dear sir, where are we going? An’ why’s there no one in ‘ere?’ He tapped the man on the shoulder, first softly but in his growing impatience he started pounding at the man. The driver didn’t seem very affected. In silence he pointed at a sign above their heads that said ‘No speaking with the chauffeur while driving.’

Keith grumbled a few insults and fell into a chair, tense with anger. The ride was so boring. It was all desert, sand, flat and road as far as he could see. There was literally nothing else.   
Pretty soon he was fast asleep. 

The bus got to a halt so suddenly that Keith woke up with a start. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes and looked around to see what happened. It was dark outside, but looking closely Keith saw a small lamp dangling in the wind. He could even hear it squeak a little, because the bus doors were open. A chilly night breeze blew softly through his hair. The mysterious driver had vanished. It made Keith panic a little. ‘Where the fuck did the bastard go? Where did ‘e drop me?’ But quickly he calmed himself down. He had been in far more dangerous situations than this. He handled with explosions on a daily basis for crying out loud. He was sure the guy was just stopping to eat or take a piss. Thinking about it, Keith liked to do the same. He hadn’t eaten all day, he should be starving … Except … he wasn’t.  

That was weird, but whatever. He got up and out and with the light of the bus behind him, Keith could finally see where they stopped. The lamp he saw was hanging from a huge dark building with a wooden door. The splintery wood looked ages old. They were still in the same bleeding desert though. Keith felt like kicking something in his frustration about not being able to get home, but then he heard something. It sounded like a guitar, right behind him. Startled, he looked over his shoulder.  

And there was Jimi Hendrix, a guitar round his neck and dressed only in some bell bottom jeans.

Keith yelled and in his terror he bumped his back at the bus. ‘What the hell!’ he screamed. This guy looked healthier than Keith’d ever seen Jimi. ‘I’m sorry, but, Jesus, you look a hell of a lot like Jimi Hendrix!’

The man jammed a little on his guitar, all the while looking serenely at Keith, as if he was waiting for him to calm down.   
‘I am, Keith,’ he said softly. He sounded an awful lot like Jimi too.

Keith laughed, recovering a little from the shock. ‘Oh, no you’re not! Jimi’s dead. I know, cause I live in the apartment he died in.’ 

‘ _Lived_ ,’ Jimi corrected. ‘You’re dead too, man.’   
He spoke so quietly that Keith hoped he misunderstood what the Jimi-look-a-like just said.  
‘What?’  
‘Keith, you died,’ repeated Jimi calmly. ‘In the same flat I did. But it’s fine, you’re with us now. We’re all here. Elvis, Buddy Holly, Cass Elliot. Me and Janis are running the place right now, but–…’

‘Fuck off,’ Keith said. This guy made him lose his temper. ‘Who are ya, seriously. I just wanna go ‘ome, dear man. I don’t know ‘ow I got ‘ere an’ I wanna go back.’

Jimi remained patient. ‘ _You died_ ,’ he sternly told Keith, but his deep voice was as hoarse and rhythmic as always. ‘Dude, you took 26 of those goddamn pills. Six was already fatal. What the hell was that, man? You don’t remember at all?’

Keith blinked and started to think. Because he  _did_ remember. And it would explain a lot. He actually felt a little like he died when he woke up. It felt terrible.

He shook his head. This was ridiculous. ‘But I’ve recovered now,’ he declared. ‘So can I go back?’

‘No.’

Keith wanted to hit this fellow pretending to be Jimi pretty hard. ‘You can’t tell  _me_  what the fuck I do!’

‘Yes, I can. I told you: Janis and I are running this place now.’

‘Whát place?!’ Keith said, angrily.

Jimi spread his arms. His guitar slid down a little, so the neck pointed to the sand. ‘Heaven,’ he replied.

Keith’s eyes grew even bigger than they already were. He glared at Jimi and up at the large building. It didn’t look much like heaven to him. ‘Are  _you_  God?’ he asked in disbelief.

Jimi laughed. ‘Come on, don’t be daft. Jan and me, we’re only understudies. There’s just too many people to run it all alone. Even we are working in shifts. Before me, Robert Johnson managed the place. Soon as Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton get here, they’re gonna take over from me.’

Keith fell quiet for a second. Maybe this guy was telling the truth. He sounded sincere. But if this all were true he only wanted to know one thing. ‘Is Neil ‘ere?’  
‘No.’  
‘Fuck you then,’ replied Keith and he turned round. ‘I don’t believe this shit.’

Jimi sighed. ‘He’s not allowed. It’s only famous musicians and family.  I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. Will you come in now? Everyone’s waiting. Specially Brian’s looking forward to see ya again.’

The thought that people went through so much trouble to fool him cheered Keith up a little.   
‘Well, you’ve obviously worked hard to prepare this,’ he said, but Jimi had already gone through the wooden door. He had to bend a little or else he’d bump his head at the door post. Keith followed him, not needing to bend at all, into a dark space. He couldn’t see a thing until someone turned a flickering light on. It gave a dim yellowish glow so Keith could just make out where they were, but not much more. They stood in a small corridor with a large spiral staircase in the corner. Keith thought he heard voices and laughter coming from all around the building.

Jimi didn’t stop to look around, but paced through a big, decorated door on the other end of the room. Behind that door lay one of the prettiest rooms Keith had ever seen. It looked like some sort of ballroom. It had mirrors on the ceiling and was crowded with people, sitting or standing around tables or gathered round musical instruments. Several people greeted him like he was an old friend, though he never even met them. A girl with dark, lank hair was playing guitar right next to Keith. Her voice merged with that of the boy sitting in front of her. It sounded great. Keith felt a little more comfortable, hearing all those beautiful sounds.  

Suddenly Jimi laid his hand upon the shoulder of a blonde man and turned him round to face Keith. Again Keith stared at a man he thought was dead. This time it was Brian Jones. It couldn’t be anyone else. His thick blonde hair, the bags under his eyes, the way he held his cigarette, it was him. But how in the world did they find someone who looked  _that_  much look Jimi ánd Brian? It just wasn’t possible.

‘Keith, relax,’ said Brian as he saw Keith’s growing distress. ‘We’re all dead here and I tell you, it ain’t that bad.’ He grinned at him and offered him a cigarette, but Keith shook his head and hurried away, back to the corridor, where he bumped straight into Marc Bolan. Before he knew it he was screaming. This place scared the shit out of him. All these people should have been dead. It freaked him out completely.

Marc wasn’t offended by Keith’s screamed greeting. A large smile appeared on his face.   
‘Hey, you’re new!’ he yelled excitedly. ‘It’s been a while since we got someone new! I was one of the last, y’see. Came here a year ago. There was this plane crash with Lynyrd Skynyrd a month after me, but they arrived together. It’s a lot different when you’re all alone, innit?’

Keith just nodded. He couldn’t believe he was looking at Marc Bolan. That guy had a car crash last year. It’d been all over the newspapers. It wasn’t possible that he was talking to him now. But this man had the same happy smile, the same colourful clothes and the same wild curls. No one else could smile like Marc Bolan.

Marc laughed. ‘You weren’t so quiet when you still breathed.’

For a moment Keith assumed Marc meant that metaphorically, but then he started to notice … He really wasn’t breathing. He didn’t even need the air. It hadn’t occurred to him until now: he never noticed it when he did breathe, so now he hadn’t noticed when he didn’t.

Keith felt a lot like crying. Marc’s face clouded over. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, laying a hand on Keith’s tense shoulder, but that scared him so much he pulled himself loose from Marc’s kindness.   
‘No, it’s not,’ he snapped.   
Right then a shadow fell over the two of them. ‘Is there a problem here?’ said a woman’s voice.   
A cackling laugh echoed through the dark corridor when Marc turned raound with a jump and bowed flamboyantly. Keith recognized the sound immediately.   
‘Janis Joplin,’ he whispered.

She descended the stairs with the graceful air of an empress, dressed in long puff sleeves and with feathers in her hair. She looked happier than ever.

Keith was fed up with all the dead people grinning at him from every nook of this bleeding building. ‘Alright,’ he exclaimed, ‘it was wonderful, but I really ‘ave to go now. I ‘ave a band, y’know. Me mates are wondering where I am.’

‘They’re not. You’re dead,’ said Janis, still smiling like she was telling a joke. She ran her hand through Keith’s hair and said: ‘Oh, honey, I know how you feel … But you just wait till you see you’re room!’

‘I don’t want no bloody room,’ grumbled Keith. ‘I want to see me girlfriend an’ me band mates. Now take me home for Christ’s sake.’

‘We can’t, sweetheart. Look, your band mates will get here too eventually.’

‘When?’ demanded Keith.

‘There’s a list over there, if you’d like. But it’s not definite. Anything could happen. We didn’t really know when to expect you really.’

Keith blinked. ‘No?’

‘No, no. You were changing from going to staying like a traffic light, hon. Well, don’t mind that now. Let’s go see when you’re band mates get here.’  
Marc went back into to the ballroom. A loud cheering welcomed him.  
‘An’ Annette an’ Alice an’ Ringo,’ Keith added, skipping after Janis. He hoped they’d all get her within the year. He could manage to survive a year here without them, maybe.

Under the staircase hang a bulletin board with a long list pinned to it. ‘This is only for this century yet, so Annette, Roger and Pete are not on it. John is though.’

‘John!’ said Keith, but when he looked up the date his heart fell. ‘That’s  _ages_  away! And you’re telling me I’ll be stuck here without seeing them for all this time?’ He couldn’t even grasp what that meant. ‘An’ what about me fans, Janis? I can’t leave ‘em like that.’

‘You can. We did too.’

‘There has to be a way back.’

‘No there ain’t,’ said Janis firmly. ‘You’re gonna have to get used to being dead, honey … Look, I’m here with that bastard Jim Morrison and even  _I’m_ happy.’

Keith grumbled. The more Jimi and Janis told him, the more determined he got to get out of here. No way they were going to keep him. There had to be a way out.

Suddenly he thought of something. ‘ _You’re_  only understudies, Jimi said. So take me to the main man; the boss or whatever ya call it.’

‘We can’t, honey.’

He felt so desperate. He just wanted to be free. ‘Well, what choice do I have then?’ he cried. ‘I can’t see me friends, I  _have_ to stay here and the boss doesn’t care. Sounds like prison ter me.’

Janis’s eyes grew big. ‘Oh no! No, not at all. You can go anywhere you like.’

‘Can I go home?’ Keith tried. He knew it couldn’t, but he wanted it so badly.

Janis looked at him for a while. Then she sighed and to his great surprise she said: ‘Well … Yes. Sort of. It’s just that you won’t have a body. You can’t  _do_  anything anymore.’ Her voice cracked. ‘People won’t know you’re there. It seems so boring to me. You don’t want that.’

‘Yes!’ said Keith excitedly. ‘I do! I do want that! And then when everyone’s forgotten me or died like me, I can go back here? Can’t I?’

Janis bit her lip. ‘No, sweetheart. You can’t. I mean … The main man, as you call it, doesn’t want the souls wandering in and out. So you can only go back once every hundred years. He wants us to be under constant watch. Now you’re under mine and Jimi’s, but if you go back to earth you’re under someone else’s supervision. They’ll have to pick you up, so before they do you’re alone for a while an’ all sorts of things can happen to ya when you’re alone.’

‘Well I can take care of meself,’ bragged Keith.

Janis laughed loudly. ‘I have never seen anybody who could take  _less_ care of themselves than you, honey!’

Keith smirked a little. She was kind of right, he had to admit that. ‘Well, fine. Just send me back. I’ll come back here in hundred years if I don’t like it down there. But I will. I’m just gonna watch people. I’ll enjoy myself.’ He laughed maliciously.

‘You do know you’re gonna be there for a whole lotta time while your band mates and everyone you love are gonna be here? And even if they choose to be down there, you won’t know. You can’t see or hear other souls. You wouldn’t have a body, y’see, like we do here.’

‘It’s fine!’ replied Keith. ‘I wanna see what me fans are up to as well.’

‘Well, whatever, man.’ Janis motioned in the direction of the door. ‘Suit yourself, the door’s open. We just really love having you here too, baby.’

‘I know,’ replied Keith, although he didn’t truly believe it. He knew they just wanted him because he was fun at parties. They wanted a laugh. But he wasn’t sure he felt like doing that any longer. He couldn’t bring it up anymore. Maybe that was why he’d been so careless with those bloody pills that got him here in the first place. He didn’t feel like going back to his old habits and his old life now that he had a chance to change. He felt like he could finally be free to be himself, or find out who he was. In peace, without anyone bothering him with the ideas they had of him.

After hugging him goodbye, Janis left Keith alone to get some champagne, but still he felt like he was doing something that wasn’t allowed when he walked off. The people in the ballroom scared him so much. He was going to flee and he didn’t say goodbye. What if they got angry? They  _were_ sort of undead. He read comic books, he knew what the risks were.

Keith started running, grabbed the copper doorknob and flung the door wide open. A warm wind played on his face. The sun was coming up already above the horizon. Apparently he got here early in the morning.   
The bus was gone, but the driver was sleeping under a wooden shed next to the door. Keith shook his shoulder ferociously to wake him up. ‘I wanna go down. Back home.’

‘Christ, not that crap again,’ mumbled the man. ‘Waking me up, middle of a dream. Bloody wandering souls …’

Although complaining, the man got up and stumbled to the side of the building. There, build against the brick wall, stood a small cabin made of wood. ‘Go in there, I’ll pull the lever and down you go. You cannot come back until the earth year 2078. Now,’ he opened the door to let Keith in, ‘off you pop, g’day.’

The door slammed close and at once the floor fell from under Keith’s feet. He screamed, feeling terrified, until he remembered he was dead already. The only thing worse was if he fell down straight into hell, if that even existed, but they would’ve told him that, wouldn’t they? Still the falling made him feel like being in a roller coaster and he was scared of the pain of hitting the ground. Could dead people still hurt?

It was dark around him. He didn’t feel anything, no wind, no temperature, nothing. He didn’t hear or see anything either. It scared him. Where was he going to end up now?   
What had he done?

After a while of falling he started to feel lighter. With every inch that he fell down he lost a little speed. Suddenly the sun seemed to come up under him. It grew lighter and lighter, colder and colder, and from one moment to the next he fell out of a cloud in the sky, heading to the surface of his home planet. Still losing speed he looked at his hands. They were slowly fading. He was losing his appearance, becoming purely the soul that he was.

Before he could even see the ground properly Keith was floating motionless above the earth, somewhere high above Australia. He worried a moment about how to move. They never told him how this worked. Where were those people who’re supposed to pick him up? He looked around a bit, hanging in the sky, wondering where he wanted to go. He didn’t need to think long about it though: of all people he wanted to see his band mate John the most.

As soon as he knew what he wanted, he started to move through the air, faster than he ever did in a plane. In seconds he saw John’s town getting closer. He saw his house and before he could even close his eyes, he fell through the roof into a bedroom. There he came to a soft halt. It didn’t hurt him a bit.

Keith was growing quite content with his decision to be back on earth, back in England. He was invisible! He couldn’t feel pain! The possibilities were endless! He cheered, but it didn’t make a sound. Still he felt the satisfaction of cheering. 

Then he started to look around a bit … and his heart sank.

John was crying. He’d never seen his friend so unhappy, what the hell was the matter? Keith sat down next to John on the bed in a way only souls could.

‘John, what’s happened?’ he asked, again without sound. ‘Talk to me, dear boy.’ He lay his invisible, insensible arm around him, trying to comfort him. ‘It’ll be fine, I can help. I’m invisible now, look at me!’

Keith never felt so powerless. He tried to find out why his friend was sad and noticed the phone in his hands. Maybe he’d just heard bad news. What could it be? Did his wife leave him? Did someone die?

Then he remembered:  _he_  died. He felt so stupid. How could he forget that? Of course his friend was sad. Keith started hugging John tightly, but could hardly feel him. He didn’t move through him, strange enough, like he had through the ceiling, but he didn’t feel the warmness of his body too. The feeling hugging John gave him reminded him of the moment you tried to push two magnets with similar poles together. He didn’t give up though. He ran his hands through John’s hair, even gave him enthusiastic kisses and tried to cheer him up by telling him what had happened and how happy he was right now. If only John could see Keith, then he’d know there wasn’t anything to cry about. He was still there. He would see him again, in a hundred years. And what was a hundred years when you had an eternity? They were going to have so much fun, not feeling any pain. They would never have a hangover again!    

As he was talking and hugging his friend, he noticed John was calming down. Keith smiled and started to bring up times he remembered with John, things that always made him happy to think about. ‘Remember we drove to gigs together and we installed this vinyl player into the car and sang along to the Beach Boys the whole time? Drove our driver mad! Remember, John?’

John started to smile. It was as if he had heard Keith! Keith knew this wasn’t possible, because he couldn’t even hear his own voice. But he was sure it was because of him. This wasn’t a coincidence. He was putting all of his positive energy into him.

It gave Keith great satisfaction to see the effect he had on John’s sadness. He might be good at this. His life had been one big cheering-up, he just needed to remind people of his stories to make them smile again! He could do that. Imagine how much influence he could have by doing that for the next hundred years – between sneaking around in girl’s dressing rooms of course.

So after visiting and comforting all his other friends and family he floated up to the sky again. Without his body he sensed a lot more. It seemed like his soul was perceptive and his body had just been able to let some things through. Now that his body wasn’t in the way anymore he could  _feel_  other people too. He wasn’t able to explain in words how. It was like you know something is grass by the scent it has, but you can’t explain the smell of grass in words. Similarly, Keith didn’t know how to describe the feeling he had when someone thought about him, but now he just knew when someone wanted him to be with them. It didn’t happen all the time, but it happened much and much more often than he expected. People wanted him and not just because he was fun at parties. They just missed him. Dougal missed him, Alice, Ringo, Harry, and even people he hardly knew or he thought barely liked him were affected by his death. It seemed so strange to Keith. It made him feel warm but at the same time he regretted a lot of things he did and didn’t do in his life. There were so many people he could have gotten closer to. He gave a deep sigh. Then he started to visit each and every one of them and told them everything he didn’t dare to talk about when he was alive. He had nothing left to lose now.

It took him longer than a week, but at the end he felt relieved, although it didn’t always seem to cheer up the person he talked to. Keith didn’t mind, because when he followed these people around for a while, he noticed they got over it pretty quickly. He wished he talked this much about everything that bothered him earlier. This new life, this afterlife, was the best thing that ever happened to him, apart from joining The Who of course.

After he visited the people that actually knew him, he began to visit fans. Sometimes it seemed to Keith like they needed him even more than his friends and family. He loved that. He loved his fans, and in a whole different way than he loved other people. He didn’t have to do anything for them. He wasn’t even living anymore and still they kept on loving him and forgiving him for all the crazy stuff he did. They forgave things Keith couldn’t even forgive himself for.   
They were sad a lot though. He could hardly bare to look at them when they cried, so he did his very best to cheer them up. He never left before they were smiling again, no matter how long it took. It made him happy when it worked. He was happy.

So, moral of the story: whenever you feel sad about your life, the world or because your favourite drummer died, just think about Keith and know that you are not alone. You think you are, but you’re not. As soon as you start thinking about Keith Moon, he’ll be with you. In the train, at school, in your room, it doesn’t matter: he’ll be there, trying to hold you, wiping your tears away and telling funny stories to cheer you up. Just because you can’t see him, doesn’t mean he’s not there.  
Don’t ever forget that he likes the fans who like him. 


End file.
